Wednesday, January 22, 2014

UPDATED PREDICTION: Having narrowed the issue, it is Eli's considered opinion, that Judge Weisberg is going to push very hard for the parties to settle with an apology. The Judge will make it clear that he won't play with those who remain stubborn. While Steyn and Simberg are individual clowns NRO and CEI are corporate entities with much to lose. Discovery, if it ever takes place is not going to be a popcorn fest on either side because it will be tightly controlled to the one issue. Steve McIntyre can unpack. Remember tho EINAL
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In a just released ruling, Rabett Run's special correspondent reports that Rand Simberg's hero has turned against him. Bunnies may remember that Simberg danced a jig when the appeals fairy denied jurisdiction.

This has been a case run on luck so far. We've had bad luck by having
the previous judge, but her incompetence has also been ultimately to our
favor, and against Mann's.

That is why we are breaking out champagne.

Today's ruling by Judge Frederick Weisberg has undoubtedly sent the National Review/Competitive Enterprise Institute team out venue shopping. Weisberg denied their motions for summary dismissal under the DC Anti-SLAPP Suit Act, but most striking was his reason for doing so

. . . .plaintiff alleges that CEI published, and National Review republished, the following defamatory statement: “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.” The allegedly defamatory aspect of this sentence is the statement that plaintiff “molested and tortured data,” not the rhetorically hyperbolic comparison to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.

with a little footnotee on the end of that paragraph

Accusing plaintiff of working “in the service of politicized science” is arguably a protected statement of opinion, but accusing a scientist of “molest[ing] and tortur[ing] data” is an assertion of fact.

and sets further forth in detail

The statement “he has molested and tortured data” could easily be interpreted to mean that the plaintiff distorted, manipulated, or misrepresented his data. Certainly the statement is capable of a defamatory meaning, which means the questions of whether it was false and made with “actual malice” are questions of fact for the jury. A reasonable reader, both within and outside the scientific community, would understand that a scientist who molests or tortures his data is acting far outside the bounds of any acceptable scientific method. In context, it would not be unreasonable for a reader to interpret the comment, and the republication in National Review, as an allegation that Dr. Mann had committed scientific fraud, which Penn State University then covered up, just as some had accused the University of covering up the Sandusky scandal. For many of the reasons discussed in Judge Combs Greene’s July 19 orders, to state as a fact that a scientist dishonestly molests or tortures data to serve a political agenda would have a strong likelihood of damaging his reputation within his profession, which is the very essence of defamation.

Oh yes, there will be discovery. Things just got a whole lot more serious for the defendants.

"Also within the past week, Judge Weisberg granted law firm Steptoe & Johnson's request to withdraw as counsel for National Review's fellow Defendant Mark Steyn. Steyn's online writing for National Review is part of the defamation charge. One could speculate that Steyn's lawyers were not very happy about this loose-cannon blogging rant by Steyn, posted on December 24: Mumbo-Jumbo for Beginners."

You said "deniers" and I figured you meant the Mann crowd. After re-reading the post, I understand you mean Steyn's. Apparently you need more time to get caught up on the emerging developments in the field.

"Apparently you need more time to get caught up on the emerging developments in the field."What? Judge Dredd, 'I am the lawww!', is hearing the next round of legal arguments? Morano will be representing the plaintiff? Steyn will be pleading non compos mentis? What?

I would certainly like to hear from a lawyer type what this means for blogs. Specifically thinking about the cr@p posted about Mann at Real Science under the pseudonym "Steven Goddard." The stuff there certainly seems to fit the defamation label to me.

If Steyn and the National Review and Simberg and the Competitive Enterprise Institute were so sure that they hadn't libelled Mann, and that the case for global warming was incorrect, fraudulent, a scientific conspiracy, or whatever else they might like to label it, why aren't they leaping at the chance to try the case in court and prove once and for all that the consensus is wrong?

To answer Bernard J.'s "simple question", I go to the first article currently posted on Mr. Steyn's website:

Many "climate skeptics" wonder why the defendants would want to get the complaint dismissed rather than put Mann through a trial in which he would have to take the witness stand and discuss his work under oath. I can understand their enthusiasm for this but for me the priority has always been the broader cause of free speech.

"...Judge Weisberg is going to push very hard for the parties to settle with an apology."

I don't know about that. If I was a defendant I'd worry about the likes of:

"Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently, manipulating his data to achieve a predetermined or political outcome, or purposefully distorting the scientific truth arefactual allegations. They go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable. Viewing the allegations of the amended complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, a reasonable finder of fact is likely to find in favor of the plaintiff on each of Counts I-VI, including the Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress alleged in Count VI as to both sets of defendants."

The push to dismiss is likely little more than cost avoidance. It is a big stretch to read anything more into that.

As a scientist myself, the defamation suit would seem to be problematic for both parties. It will come down to how scientifically literate the defense lawyers are in my opinion.Mann's work is not just data reporting, but is heavily focused on interpretation and advocacy. When a scientist does that, it opens a big can of worms for accusation of cherrypicking and fraud. If the defendant's lawyers have a good scientific staff that can find contradictory evidence from emails, speeches, etc, then Mann better have excellent documentation of his data and conclusions. If he doesn't, and some info out there seems to indicate he does play a bit loose with the data, he is in big trouble. But again, that only comes into play if the defending lawyers have the sciency chops to dig through the public domain.

Steyn is right on the merits, the judge was right on the procedure. His order was careful, well phrased and simply stated what should have been obvious to everyone: You cannot summarily dismiss even a far fetched claim if it has any faint hope of success. Summary dismissals are extremely rare. It does not take much to get to a trial on the merits.

I suspect the whole procedural mess was as a result of Mann's lawyer's stupidity in pleading that Mann was a Nobel laureate and some showmanship and game playing by NRO and Steyn, not improper gaming, but tactical gaming to probe Mann.

Steyn complains that the defendants have spent half a mill on legals so far. No doubt Mann has spent as much. Jeez, I wonder where an honest, hard working, man of the peepul like Mann gets half a mill to fritter away on a lawsuit without too much hope of economic recovery.

As for Bernard J's question: "why aren't they[Steyn and NRO] leaping at the chance to try the case in court and prove once and for all that the consensus is wrong?" Because it's expensive, and a win is a win is a win.

Fred Z, who used to spend a lot of time litigating for and against lying dorks like Mann. Nobel Laureate my left tit.

There are a number a reasons to post anonymously, Tommy.Being a "shill" is only one of many and the pointless accusation is simply childish.

Alternatively, I would query why you feel so strongly that your name be associated with your posts. Is it a narcissistic desire to be 'known'?I ask this, because a quick Google of your name brings up a number of quite negative mentions of you by others regarding your behavior and attention-getting.

For me, I prefer to keep my name away from aggressive people such as yourself. A comment on a blog simply doesn't rate the annoyance of having to deal with dweebs that discover my name.

Judges do like to settle cases and keep their golf times, and they will knock heads to get there. OTOH, they don't like to waste their own time trying to settle cases that won't settle. I didn't see anything in Weisberg's order suggesting he was any more or less to push for settlement than another judge. Do you have something else in mind, Eli?

Other comments: you can see how much the new judge cares about the Nobel thing - he didn't consider it a substantive change in the amended complaint.

Steyn is representing himself? Oh my. AFAICT he's not a lawyer. If he were poor that would be one thing, but if someone can afford a lawyer but doesn't get one, that's not a situation where judges enjoy holding their hand and guiding them through procedure.

On appeal, as a theoretical legal matter, the appellate court would only look at this new dismissal. On the practical level, the appellate court will know that two lower court judges have dismissed the almost-same motion.

Forgot one other thing - the Sandusky reference might not have been defamatory, but it could still be damaging. Once you show defamation then the Sandusky claim made in the same context could magnify the amount of damages they have to pay.

I have no problem posting anonymously *if* the posts are sensible. But when it's either pure nonsense or idiocy - then it's hardly worth dealing with unless one is bored.

If I were running a blog I would probably not censor any posts that are attached to a verifiable account, but trash anything posted anonymously that violates the least standards of civility.

What I *do* find interesting is that it is usually right-wingers who immediately search to find out personal details of those opposing them in a discussion. And of course the correlation between right-wingers and climate skeptics is pretty high.

I may occasionally look to see if my opponent has any specific credentials; but where they live, how many children they have, where they work, etc. really has no relevance.

It's ironic though that usually the very same people posting anonymously to protect their personal details are the first to try and find out those details about their opponents and take it much further than I'd ever think of going. There's obviously a lot of hypocrisy and projection involved.

"Gee, if Mann really thought he was defamed, why didn't he just willing offer to share his data and methodology to prove his case"

Because he didn't need to. It was already out there. The methodologies were in the published papers and the data is referenced for any arsehole and their mother to go get. Rentseekers can't be bothered so they can cry foul and waste the time of others.

Simberg claims to be a smart rocket scientist type, but every time he tries to argue science he cites some political anti-science denialista. And he has done everything possible to corrupt any defense he did have.

Steyn is just plain stupid, so it will be pure comedy watching him try and defend himself without lawyers.

2) Opinions of identifiable individuals, not implying they were tied to meat-world identities.

Some who consistently use a Googleable pseudonym can establish a fairly clear on-line identity, especially if a website is attached, but sometimes if they have just posted often enough to assess the weight that should be attached to their opinions. In fact, people can use their real names and not be usefully identifiable on the net. "bill" is unidentifiable, "billsmith" is not a lot better, but billsmith673 might establish a useful online identity.

3) In the meat-world, people normally include calibration of anyone's past statements in assessing new ones. Fortunately, many arguments can be decided with data, but sometimes they can't, in which case, one has to get the best guesses possible. Among others, managers, corporate troubleshooters and venture capitalists all have to assess the claims they hear of what might or might or might not occur or be achievable, and any good ones factor in past experience.

For the topic of this post, I'd want to see what lawyers think, but there's only one commenter here I know who is one, so I tend to weight Brian's comments a bit heavier than most. Ideally, we'd hear from American libel lawyers.

Poor Anonytroll is incapable of reading in context. The "Nature Trick" was using the proxy up to the point where instrumental data become reliable and the Proxy data become unreliable due to changes in precipitation, etc. It is chartsmanship, not data manipulation. The purpose of charts is to tell a story. Clearly you've never made one.

"The purpose of charts is to present one line to represent two different datasets, but make it appear as one dataset."

All fixed for you a_ray. See I could graph a single line that was flat and always had a value of 10 and span a_ray's years on earth. And label it a_ray's shoe size. But I applied Mike's trick and after 1992 it seems to continue to show a_ray's shoe size, but when in fact it is his IQ.

I don't blame anyone for wanting to remain pseudonymous ("Mal Adapted" isn't my real name), but it gets hard to tell one "anonymous" from another. You don't have to post under your own name, or even register a pseudonym on RR, but you can undersign your comments with a consistent moniker.

We persuaded Anonymous Troll #1 to at least give itself a number. Would the other anonymous commenters please take their own numbers, starting with '2'?

It is amazing that we still have self-identified warmists defending the indefensible Mann. Most self-respecting warmista have thrown him under the bus or are simply mum. It will be quite a spectacle to see Steyn's attorneys, during discovery, chasing Mann around the locker room until Mann opens his tutu. Butter popcorn time indeed. Take a look:

Of course, sane readers will already know that he "Hockey Stick" has been replicated by every subsequent study, so one is left to ponder who DM is addressing. Apart from fellow quacks on americanwanker.com.

Accusing a scientist of fraudulence is not a standard journalistic practice. It's actionable. He didn't just call him 'a fraud' in a fit of passion on a blog, he accused him of systematic fraudulence, with malice, in a journalist article in a publication of his sponsors.

"Under current constitutional doctrine, Mann has to prove that the bloggers either knew he wasn’t actually guilty of scientific misconduct or were aware that they didn’t know one way or the other."

That sounds like a reasonable restatement of the "reckless disregard of the truth" standard.

You don't have to know what you're saying is false, you can just be reckless about it (and also, wrong).

The law hasn't done a great job of distinguishing negligent v. reckless v. knowing. As a practical matter, it's often the standard used when a judge suspects the person did actually know, but can't prove it, and they want to hold them to a more difficult standard than just being incompetent/negligent.

And it's not impossible to prove, esp. in this case where the Ds have cited and apparently read a lot of info that indicated their claims were false, and then went ahead and made them anyway.

Why are the denier trolls so intent on demonstrating that they are ignorant, dim, dishonest, and generally vile? No one is swayed by them and it isn't possible to engage with people acting in such bad faith.

Michael Mann is a political activist who claims to be a scientist. Ultimately it's the activism which I protest--and its shaky basis in science.

There has always been climate change. Let's suppose that climate change will indeed radically change the world. Suppose also that it will be mostly harmful. Suppose also that human beings are the primary cause. Suppose also that they can do something to prevent it. Then I still do not necessarily think that they SHOULD do something about it.

Just as with Noah's flood, there are far greater evils to worry about on Judgement Day than carbon emissions--which will greatly increase on Judgement Day, anyway. God will radically change the earth. But I expect Michael Mann is a denier.

No, Dilbert_space. The Christian position is not first of all that I have contributed to the deaths of millions of innocent people, but that I have caused my own. Everybody is guilty of his own sin even if he passes on his sinful nature to those who come after him. And there is only one innocent human being.

The Christian position is the God has given to us the care of the world. Moreover, worrying first about a Day of Judgement and second about the well being of your fellow man, sort of kinda is a real tell about where your soul will end up.

Now Eli is a very old bunny, as a matter of fact he still remembers when Steve McIntyre was doing his Nigel Persaud imitation. As some other ancient creatures of the woods, such as the Weasel may remember, old Stevio asked Mike for the data, and Mike asked his grad student, Scott Rutherford to send the data to McIntyre, which he did as an Excel spread sheet.

There were a couple of copying errors, which Eli played a role in figuring out, while Steve was throwing one of his french fits.

So the short answer is that Mann shared the data when first asked, not in the form Steve wanted, Steve bitched and moaned and demanded and accused and after that not so pleasant little experience Mann was a little less sharing.

God did indeed make man a steward, but he failed. That was the Fall. Every Christian, because he is concerned about his fellow man, warns him about the Christ who will return as judge on Judgement Day.

Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

At best we got a mulligan not a get out of jail free card. To go back to an earlier tradition whoever saves a life, it is as if they saved an entire world and that has to go strongly against your sin account.

Sorry, I am, your solipsistic take on Christianity, will, Eli fears, condemn you to hell, either here by your fellows or there by another.

Although we live after the Fall when the gospel mandate is more important than the original cultural mandate, we should still use the natural environment wisely, even though it has been so marred and even ruined by our sin. I believe that.

What we need is a sense of proportion, an evaluation of priorities, and a humble realization that we are mere creatures living before the face of God who will indeed end history as we know it. The Christian believes that Judgement Day, not climate change disaster, is always imminent. Maranatha!

Also, in reference to being a steward and taking dominion of the earth, remember what Mark Steyn wrote: that Michael Mann's politicized science could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet. So have concern for your fellow man and use for more worthy causes the enormous funds wasted on statistally attempting to reduce otherwise harmless carbon dioxide emissions which might be causing global warming which might be dramatically changing the climate in possibly a primarily harmful way.

I think I can rest my case that the trolls here are paid shills for Jesus. Anyone watching the paid shill business can trace this back to rabid Christians. It's long past time to relieve these religious organizations or their tax exemptions and call them what they are, paid liars and disinformants.

Having witnessed (and participated) in these endless arguments about anonymity in blog comments, I would just like to compliment anonymous for what I think is the best argument I've seen yet.

=]] Alternatively, I would query why you feel so strongly that your name be associated with your posts. Is it a narcissistic desire to be 'known'? [[==

Not as good as it could be, as it would have been stronger if de-personalized.

Being anonymous or non-anonymous tells you nothing about the merits of someone's comment. That people on blogs so often argue about the importance of anonymity tells you a great deal about the phenomenon of blogospheric arguing.

That said, anonymous, it would make it easier in a logistical sense to discuss matters with you if you'd use a pseudonym.

As I continually read the right wing libertarian nonsense it's understandable why only 6% of researchers in all fields of science claim the Republican Party brand. http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-politics-and-religion/

When the Republican nominee has to join the Flat Earth Society in order to win the nomination then any self respecting researcher would find the Republican brand verboten. It's a shame that we have to so heavily depend on liberals and moderates to do the lions share of the heavy science lifting. A mind is a terrible thing to waste but when you confuse ideology for science what else would you expect.

With the New Confederacy anti intellectual/science tail wagging the American dog it's any wonder we haven't cut science funding more than we have.

Common sense would say that when people with the least amount of science knowledge make AGW political and then win the day that, society is living in a fools' paradise.

I've used plenty of pseudo-names and pseudonyms in the past, but lately I only use them and anonymity on blogs, forums and websites where I am BANNED FOR LIFE, lol. Here I use my full name, because it's the truth, and I have a piece of paper with an official imprinted stamp that proves it. That's very important to some people, like fascists, bureaucrats and the intellectually crippled that now walk among us.

You, who cannot exist in a Cartisian sense without opening his mouth to structure his thoughts, are in part a member of the sort of superstitious and illogically-thinking fundamentalism that is the reason that I, like ARiDS (24/1/14 3:22 AM), left behind my childhood religious education.

I'll tell you what... If you can resolve for me the inconsistencies in the Bible such as are listed here:

I will happily reconsider my current lack of faith in the Christian fundamentalist mythology as an accurate depiction of reality. All I ask is that you use testable and referenced evidence, non-fallacious logic, and scientifically-defensible understanding of the universe.

Having heard many preachers damning everyone else, and knowing of many historical and even present day instances when this lead to death and torture, Eli is not persuaded that only God damns.

And again, if you are only for yourself, who will be for you? Getting right with God requires that you are right with your fellow man. Solipsism, and being obsessed with your own relationship to God, make no mistake about it, is solipsism, you are not the only thing in the world, is indeed the road to creation of a hell on earth and damnation.

Indeed, proclaiming your holiness and prayers loudly in public is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what Christ teaches as warranted.

Not only that, but doing so WILL GET YOU SENT TO HELL.

Pray in the silence of your heart, where only your lord god can hear you. That is the only way.

The fundies appear to be the least interested or knowledgable about the contents of their articles of faith. Proclaiming that they follow only the New Testament (because the Old is so full of atrocities that cannot be countenanced as good today), they ignore the New and parrot the exhortations of the Old.

Roger Pielke Sr. isn't such a bad chap. I think you must have meant Jr., who is a twisty thinker. You could add McIntyre to that list.

As to religion, there's good and bad in most of them, so what you make of it and bring to your life says more about you than about it. Try the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), and most of the Gospels, short and repetitive documents that do not support selfishness in the service of wealth and anti-stewardship.

Anonymity is a mixed bag, but some of the raunchier and more obnoxious attacks and promotion of ignorance come from anonymous sources, so one might say, all other things begin equal, that using one's own name makes one think twice about cruising for a bruising.

Thanks to those who provide more detail, and the UCS and whoever else is supporting Mike in finally refusing to turn the other cheek as massive lies and insults pile up.

Eli, if you were not thinking about "damning" to hell, then I was. I've written enough about Judgement Day already for you to realize that I believe it to be an important concern. Only God condemns people to hell. If you think otherwise, then you do not know much about God, yourself, sin, and hell.

I'm not sure of the reason that you think I'm "only for myself." Warning about Judgement Day is itself an act of kindness although many of the deniers frequenting your site obviously do not see it as such.

Your charge of solipsism might have come from my screen name. I chose it perhaps too quickly, but I thought it expressed my belief in freedom of speech as a human right.

Hmmm ... McIntyre, along with Eschenbach and Watts can maybe claim themselves to be "amateur/citizen scientists".But as that group seems to be primarily characterised by incompetence and cluelessness, I'm not sure they'd wanmt to lay claim to it.

With Mann's centering only over the 20th century in PCA, the fact that it overweights hockey sticks, the fact that it is not a previously known method, the fact that Mann fought hard not to disclose it, plus all the other stuff in Andrew Montford's "Hockey Stick Illusion", make it perfectly reasonable for someone to think him a fraud.

Do any of you Mann defenders think his unorthodox PCA centering was good science?

Do any of you Mann defenders think his unorthodox PCA centering was good science?

Mann's eigenvalue thresholding procedure automatically compensated for the effects of his PCA/SVD "short-centering".

The PCA short-centering business is a complete non-issue. It's something that can easily be compensated for. Run the data through a standard-centered PCA/SVD routine, set the eigenvalue threshold appropriately, and you will get the exact same hockey stick.

Anyone technically competent who has actually taken the time to understand what Mann did would know that.

As Eli said, you can find any number of preachers of most religions damning other people to hell, and trying to make the trip shorter. Less so today than yesterday, which is a good thing, but still.

The curious thing is that the faith alone crowd through its self obsession and avoidance of good works and care for others beyond pious preaching, of course, greases its own way into the pit. First feed the poor, then tell right from wrong for even saintly folk will act like sinners unless they get their customary dinners.

Of course, while that post pointed out that McI's work was at best statistically and scientifically incompetent, Deep Climate had not yet found the smoking gun of the 100:1 cherry pick, in Due diligence... followed by Nick Stokes's nice analysis, Effect of selection...

MBH98: PCA decenter for one part of the data: minor error, admitted by authors, but made no significant difference (statistics sometimes work that way); when redone centered, graphs look almost identical.

But then, a 100:1 cherry-pick to get the 1% of the resulting graphs that show the most positive hockey sticks, with an non-real persistence that guarantees more jiggly curves ... *academic fraud.*

I've checked the R code, and that is not an accident, and as DC and Nick showed, unless you do all of this, the claims evaporate.

Montford: there's no evidence of the slightest statistical competence to sort this out, and he was perfectly happy to quote David Deming from our favorite dog astrology journal, then invent a false confirmation by Richard Lindzen as well as misrepresent the borehole work of Huang, etal.

The latter was amusing:The HSI talk page was getting about 20 comments/day, I posted that .. dead silence for day ... then people trying to delete it, generally a NO-NO for Talk pages. Nobody tried to refute it, just delete it. The noble Stoat (considered in some quarters the Dark Lord of Wikipedia) kept restoring it, but nobody would discuss it, and it finally got archived ... but it is still there.

Of course, Montford had great praise for the Wegman Report and its process, but that was before the roof fell in, with later echoes. Wegman had used a May 11 2005 PPT by MCI+McK, organized by GMI+CEI, as the blueprint and key source. By the way, in that PPT, McI+McK gave several false citations (forms of falsification in academe):

p.10: the Lamb graph was ascribed to IPCC(1995), rather than IPCC(1990), however, that image actually is identical to the one used by John Daly, slightly different from the actual IPCC(1990), i.e., they clearly didn't have IPCC(1990) or IPCC(1995) in hand.

p.11: They showed Huang et al (1997), which was long obsolete and whose use was explicitly disavowed. That could be just incompetent scholarship.

p.12: they gave Deming's quote from the dog astrology journal JSE(2005), but ascribed it to Science in 1995, needed for that story to make even the slightest sense.

False citations needed to make story work ... more than incompetence.

But, I can predict that this will have zero effect for those ridden by strong Morton's Demon, because such demons reject any data they may not like. :-)

I see that some of you have brought up Tamino's review @Real Climate. I'm familiar with it and I was just astounded when I read the comments. Judith Curry seemed calm and reasonable, considering the circumstances, while most of the responses to her were full of vitriol. Since I read the book, I thought her assessment of it was very accurate.

I've always noticed that when someone is on the wrong side of an argument, they tend to get mad. That's not the only reason for someone to get mad. Sometimes there is a great sense of outrage over some perceived injustice. One of the things that got me interested in the hockey stick was reading Willis Eschenbach's extreme outrage about climate scientists and something called the Jesus paper. The whole field of paleoclimate looked pretty dull, but I kept running across highly polarized arguments over the hockey stick. I was very impressed with Matt Ridley's Angus Miller lecture in which highly recommended THSI. I got around to reading it and sort of got hooked on this story. I have gone to the various blogs and read a lot of past posts and comment threads.

My conclusion is that McIntyre has found a lot of bad science in the field of paleoclimate. This doesn't mean he's disproved global warming or even if the hockey stick was actually accurate. What he did show was that this widely promoted graph was not supported by sound science. He was not trying to show that a different graph was more correct. He was showing that a claim was not robust. Showing that a claim is not robust IS SCIENCE!

If I understand correctly, a quote about getting rid of the MWP is purported to come from a fringe journal. While it certainly makes the quote suspect, it does not prove it wrong. Whether this quote was ever made or not, I can't believe that there is not a lot of desire and confirmation bias among the paleo people to minimize the MWP.

According to researchers like Dan Kahan, the smarter people are, the more susceptible they are to confirmation bias. You people commenting here seem fairly smart, so ....?

Canman, you are free to draw your own conclusions, so allow me to draw mine: anyone who is impressed by Matt Ridley is enthralled more by the story telling than by reality. Invoking Willis Eschenbach further supports me in my assessment.

Your motivated reasoning to accept the "we have to get rid of the MWP" statement is also clear. A bit of research into the statement would make an objective observer (just so you know, I don't have any negative or positive feelings about the existence of a MWP, nor do any paleoclimatologists I know) think twice before even considering it likely. We have one person who years later in a congressional testimony made the claim that some prominent scientist, whose name he could not remember, made that statement. Consider the likelihood of remembering the statement (e-mail itself conveniently no longer available), but not who wrote it. Then consider the likelihood of someone writing to someone else he has never met before to get involved in some nefarious activity. It's conspirational thinking.

Oh, and if you think McIntyre shows anything, you may want to consider his motivated reasoning documented here:http://deepclimate.org/2010/05/14/how-to-be-a-climate-science-auditor-part-2-the-forgotten-climategate-emails/

Perhaps we have more in common than you realize, Eli. Even though you mischaracterize the "faith alone crowd", you evidently advocate "good works and care for others" and "feeding the poor". So do I.

I'm with the Cornwall Alliance's "Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming":

1. We call on our fellow Christians to practice creation stewardship out of Biblical conviction, adoration for our Creator, and love for our fellow man—especially the poor.

2. We call on Christian leaders to understand the truth about climate change and embrace Biblical thinking, sound science, and careful economic analysis in creation stewardship.

3. We call on political leaders to adopt policies that protect human liberty, make energy more affordable, and free the poor to rise out of poverty, while abandoning fruitless, indeed harmful policies to control global temperature.

lots of examples of "politely plausible" here ... this can run and run. However, there is nothing polite about the continuing and long-running attacks on the professional community of practicing and knowledgeable climate scientists promoted by them. Our bullshit meters went on high alert when Judith Curry began defending herself by attacking anyone knowledgeable who dared ask her to back up her opinions. Insistence that we all read and believe Montford, or that the Cornwall alliance supports stewardship while claiming global warming is not true, for that matter, sounds nice but is not beneficial.

Anyone using 'alleged' is almost certainly a denier and that hint is expanded upon in their "What we deny" section:

"We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. "

That pretty much says, "We don't believe changes in CO2 can afffect the earth's the earth's temperature.

You can also grok their orientation looking at their prominent members - filled with deniers. They obviously feel at home there.

Canman said, "My conclusion is that McIntyre has found a lot of bad science in the field of paleoclimate..."

McIntyre did no such thing -- his statistical background aside, he simply doesn't have the specific paleoclimate expertise needed to make any serious contributions in that field.

Now, here's the "elevator pitch" version of how McI went wrong in his favorite attack on Mann (the hockey-sticks from noise thing):

1) He relied on a 100:1 cherry-pick of results. He then made things even worse by performing a 12:100 cherry-pick of the original 100:1 cherry-pick to get noise hockey-stick plots for his paper. (Note how all 12 of his noise-hockey-sticks were "right-side-up" when there's only a 50% chance that a particular noise-hockey stick will be right-side-up -- there's only a 1/4096 chance having 12 out of 12 randomly-selected hockey sticks all be right-side up).

2) His "random noise" was contaminated with hockey-stick signal statistics. Details available at the link I provided earlier.

Saying that catastrophic manmade global warming is not true is not the same as saying that global warming is not true. There's a very important difference.

And when, pray tell, do you expect the continuous rising of Earth's temperature to stop? 2200 AD? 3000 AD? When we stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere? When you religious freaks stop fucking and pumping out little indoctrinated freaks out of your little women's womb's and onto the Earth's surface? lol. When you stop hunting trees and creatures into extinction? When you have enough gas stations, strip malls, stick houses and condos and idiotic evangelical churches on every corner? When you have converted the entire third world to zombies? Clueless twit.

climate change due to global warming caused by the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases

Since we're stuck with language, which is an approximation, quibbling about how to describe something that has been proven to be real to all but a fringe group (and its masses of political, magic thinking, and for-profit adherents) is tactical but not honest.

Note that time does not stop at 2100, and the way we are going may indeed induce more catastrophe (and as to catastrophe, anybody remember BP oil spill, Sandy, Haiyan, Australian heat, and on and on ...). I'm experimenting with using "greenhouse weirding" lately. Now this will grow and grow (Haiyan victims were dislocated by further tropical disturbances in the last couple weeks, parts of the UK have been underwater for weeks, and on and on again).

You've been directed to the Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming. It's admirably short and to-the-point: signers affirm their belief that their god wouldn't allow AGW to be a problem, and no evidence will convince them otherwise.

Ultimately, the declaration reduces to the argument from consequences:

"...3. We believe mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, achievable mainly by greatly reduced use of fossil fuels, will greatly increase the price of energy and harm economies.4. We believe such policies will harm the poor more than others because the poor spend a higher percentage of their income on energy and desperately need economic growth to rise out of poverty and overcome its miseries...."

Once you've read the declaration, please tell us whether you see any problems with that position.

Does anyone know if the defendants can change arguments in mid case? That is, until now they have argued that they weren't making 'statements of fact' when they called Mann's work fraudulent or said he manipulated data. Rather, they were just expressing their disagreement with him in a hyperbolic way. That is, of course, utter nonsense, and has been rejected as such by both judges. However, the question is whether they can now reverse course and begin claiming that all along they were saying that Mann really HAD committed fraud. Wouldn't that make their earlier claims perjury? And if they CAN'T switch stories doesn't that mean they have nothing to 'discover' from Mann... how can they go fishing for 'evidence' of actual fraud (or rather, things they can use to embarrass Mann) when they have already conceded that there was no actual fraud? Wouldn't that limit discovery to JUST the question of whether they acted with "malice" (i.e. they knew or should have known that their statements were false)? Which concerns only THEIR knowledge and intentions, and thus could only come from their correspondence rather than Mann's?

I assume they wouldn't have been SO stupid as to set themselves up for such a situation, but I'm also not seeing how they can turn around and claim they need to go through Mann's correspondence for evidence of actual fraud when their 'defense' until now has been to claim that they never even meant that Mann had actually committed fraud.

If you were to be objective and honest, he probably is more familiar with the database of paleo proxies than anyone in the world. Asl Jim Bouldin.

Familiarity with the database (presumably the NOAA database?) of pale proxies does necessarily not mean that one has the paleoclimate expertise to make serious and constructive contributions to that field of study. McIntyre is certainly capable of developing that sort of expertise, but there is no indication that he has made any serious effort to do so.

All he has done is snipe from the sidelines while wasting the time/resources of genuine scientists.

Furthermore, you completely failed to acknowledge the deficiencies in his "hockey sticks from random noise" claim that I described above.

"it is Eli's considered opinion, that Judge Weisberg is going to push very hard for the parties to settle with an apology."

Not a chance! Michael Mann's reputation has been repeatedly tarnished by these bandits. Nothing less than an unequivocal loss for the defendants coupled with a huge monetary punishment will do.

Furthermore, the judge could readily be accused of wanting to prevent discovery. And pray tell WHY would he want that? Eli can bet his last n'gwee that there's all kindzz of dirty things to find in the NRO and CEI closets.

Did Mann torture data? Montford's book is full of examples of series being extended, infilled and truncated. He had a directory named "censored" with suspicious compilations! He also withheld his R2 results. His code had results for computing them. He may have committed perjury in front of the NAS panel by telling John Christy that he didn't compute them. With all this, along with the PCA shenanigans, maybe he had no fraudulent intent, but it sure looks suspicious!

Nobody who has read any of the in depth analyses and followups and actually understands them thinks so. But since some guy in a shill shop on the internet named Canman says so, it must be reasonably doubtful. Canman is trolling at the YE creationist level here.

"Censoring" in this case simply meant excluding (i.e. "censoring") different sets of tree-ring data in order to make sure that the hockey-stick results didn't depend too much on one or a few tree-ring chronologies.

This is a well-known procedure called "sensitivity analysis" that is used to ensure that results are robust; i.e. the results don't depend too much on any specific subset of the input data.

Many years ago, I coded up something known as a "censored mean-level detector". It's a good thing that the chief engineer on that project wasn't a complete idiot. Otherwise he might have thought that there was something nefarious about that "censored mean level detector".

Geez -- and you guys wonder why scientists don't want anything to do with you!

I explained in detail why the whole PCA issue was complete nonsense, and I explained it in language that people who have at least a basic understanding of the PCA/SVD algorithm could easily understand.

I'll admit I'm being a bit of a troll, but this case really bothers me. This looks like a case of editorial hyperbole to me. Steyn uses the word "fraudulent" matter of factly as an adjective on a blog for an opinion magazine. What's next? Is OJ Simpson going to start suing people for calling him a murderer? The way you CAGW people throw around invective, I would think that you would have a little thicker skins. I think Mann is childishly overreacting and you guys are cheering him on. I would think that you guys would be cringing at this episode as an embarrasment.

About the PCI, I don't see your link in a previous comment, but I'm guessing you mean a post by Deep Climate where he claims varying a parameter in McIntyres red noise can lower the hockystickicity of Mann's short centering. Doesn't it bother you that there is a hockey stick result that can be varied? Have you read what Ian Jolliffe has said about it?

The cherrypicked results are examples. McIntyre did 10,000 runs and tabulated the results with a clearly defined measure of hockeystickicity. I don't buy that there was a hockeystick shape imparted to the persistence characteristics by the tree ring data. That should be easy to check by taking these characteristics from non-hockeystick shaped series. I understand that there's a lot of them.

The problem is that McI made his pseudo-proxies far too red, ie. there is too much persistence in them. Another problem is that he didn't detrend the proxies before using them to train his algorithm which polluted his pseudo-proxies with the warming signal. Both of these errors(?) tend to inflate the hockeystickiness of the pseudo-proxies he used for his little demonstration, but has nothing at all to do with Mann's actual data or analysis (Mann didn't get to change the characteristics of his proxies).

There is a hockey stick graph for human population, a hockey stick for industrial carbon dioxide output, a hockey stick in atmospheric carbon dioxide content and yet you insist there is no hockey stick graph for temperature. Do you understand how stupid that makes you look? The answer to that question is ... no.

Canman - Mann's graph has withstood further study numerous times. If anything, the change is now *more* pronounced after Marcott et al -- or as Mother Jones headlined it , Hockey Stick Graph Now Even More Stickish

This isn't even a case of, 'you can't see the forest for the trees'; it's more like, 'you can't see the forest for the leaves.' How is it possible Mann could be so inept and wrong - yet he produced a graph that every study following him has almost exactly duplicated? Doesn't this in and of itself tell you that any errors that may have been made had to be so small as to not make a difference?

The scientific literature covering phenology contains dozens - if not hundreds of examples that also depict a hockey stick trajectory for global temperature over the last 1000 years. The hockey stick is ubiquitous. Pretending it doesn't exist is delusional.

Dhogaza asked, "If it is an important difference, perhaps you can quantify exactly where the boundary between 'CAGW' and 'AGW' lies?"

The difference I was writing of had to with CAGW versus GW, not CAGW not AGW. There has been tremendous global warming and cooling in the past history of the earth, too, and probably the human contribution to it was negligible.

My answer to your question is that I can't. I don't know whether the Cornwall Alliance has, but there is no logical necessity for them to do so, either. What's more, I don't believe you can do so, either.

We're little creatures. We didn't make the universe, and we have only a limited capacity to destroy it. Almost all the destruction we caused happened already at the Fall. God did destroy and remake the world once--with the Flood in Noah's time--and He will eventually do so again--with fire (and probably enormous carbon dioxide emissions). Our big problem with Him is not whether we are emitting too much carbon dioxide but that we don't even acknowledge His existence. And there's much more for me to add, but as you're likely a denier, it won't help here.

McIntyre's arguments against the hockey stick have nothing to do with whether it's shape was right or wrong. It was about whether his analysis was robust. It was not. Mann got a long straight handle while his critics thought there was more of a pronounced MWP. McIntyre did not show whether there was either one. He showed that Mann's long straight handle was due to his poor quality analysis. If Mann would have got his long straight handle by flipping a coin, it would still be bad science even if the long straight handle was later proved correct. You guys are either in denial about this or are trying to sweep it under the rug.

"I speak so I am said...Dhogaza asked, "If it is an important difference, perhaps you can quantify exactly where the boundary between 'CAGW' and 'AGW' lies?"

The difference I was writing of had to with CAGW versus GW, not CAGW not AGW. There has been tremendous global warming and cooling in the past history of the earth, too, and probably the human contribution to it was negligible.

My answer to your question is that I can't. I don't know whether the Cornwall Alliance has, but there is no logical necessity for them to do so, either. What's more, I don't believe you can do so, either."

No, I can't quantify it. "CAGW" is a made-up denialist term with no meaning outside the denial sphere.

Since you and no other denialist can properly define this term you toss about, you can't talk about "CAGW" vs. "GW" or "CAGW" vs. "AGW". Your speaking meaningless gibberish. a language specialized in by (but not restricted to) denialists.

"...probably the human contribution to it was negligible."

Especially before humans were created by God 6000 years ago.

This is a non-sequitor regardless. Humans died before the atomic bomb was developed, yet few would deny that tens of thousands were killed by the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.

Just because a phenomena can be caused naturally doesn't "prove" that humans can't cause the same or similar phenomena, on a devastating scale.

Conrad - no, the D's aren't stuck with asserting hyperbole. All they said was even if it P's assertions of fact are true, then it still only amounts to hyperbole. They can also argue that P's assertions are wrong.

Canman at 6:45 p.m.: no, it's defamation to call OJ a murderer. It's a reasonable assertion, esp given the civil case outcome. If OTOH I said, "OJ Simpson was convicted of criminal murder by a jury" then that would be defamation if I met the reckless malice standard for attacking a public figure. No dams for OJ though, since he lost the civil case.

Followup on the hyperbole analogy: some folks may remember the Duke lacrosse team gang rape case, which appears to have been made up by the accuser.

If someone said "I've read the information supposedly exonerating the team members but in fact they're rapists" then that would be the analogy that canman was looking for, and it would not go well for the defendant.

The long sad history of millennial sects is that millennial sects are very bad news the day and years after for those who wake up and find their expectations were foolish and nothing has happened and for those of us who had to put up with their damaging expectations beforehand and give them assistance to pick up their lives afterwards.

To base policy upon a millennial expectation is not only idiotic, it is criminal for all the beforehand and afterhand suffering and stupidity.

Eli is right, but millenarians span the politcal spectrum, and some few who were sadly dissapointed by the Cold War's outcome remain attached to the Occupy end of Environmentalism As A Way Of Life.

As with denialists trying to dial back all the data that add up to evidence of climate forcing, the vanguard of the Fast Forwarders have difficulty accepting the literally millennial , as opposed to decadal aspects of AGW. Some things do take a thousand years to emerge from the noise.

I'll spare you an elaborationof the existential threat inflation meme.

Your getting a little technical with all this Singular Value Decomposition and what not. There are probably subtle ways to tell the output from your two examples apart. Perhaps the former yields a bigger hockey stick. The fact is that if there is a higher mean for the 20th century, the mannomatic is going to push all pre 20th century values down and cherry pick a hockey stick in the first PC! And why use PCA at all? Wouldn't it be simpler to just use averages?Isn't choosing PCA over averages a kind of cherry picking? Using PCA allowed Mann to say "oh, we used this new highly sophisticated technical analysis and found a long straight handled hockey stick!" This looks a lot like what F A Hayek called "scientism".

Yet another siren call of the creationists. Seventh Day Adventists fervently waiting and expecting the 8th day. You'll be waiting a bit longer than the 14 odd years you've already got invested in the no-show.

Why is anyone engaging with who speaks? Logic and facts are simply irrelevant to a religious argument, and a religious argument is totally alien to logic and facts. In other words, it is a compete waste of time.

And the exchange with canman demonstrates how similar an ideological argument is to a religious one.

Russell provides a wonderful link, intriguing and imho relevant as well, to this fool's parade.

Canman, you assert but do not listen. I call garbage, waste of time, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. This has gone on long enough, and your arguments lack substance and backing in the real world we inhabit. They come from prejudice rather than learning and curiosity.

"And like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself—Yea, all which it inherit—shall dissolve,And like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on."

Jim, Iams argument has a long history and many people adopt it because it is facile and profitable to the preachers but it fails on its own terms, something the Iams need to think about. IEHO of course

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Denial's but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more. It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and furySignifying nothing..."

Fanks for the wink wabbit, heh heh heh. I thought commenter, oneuniverse ran circles around the rest of you guys, but I'm probably not the best judge. You do realize that all this hairsplitting is about a method of which Deep Climate said, "M&M clearly identified a mistake (or, at best, a poor methodological choice)”. Mann also did not disclose it, and fought like hell not to release it!

Dhogaza wrote, "Just because a phenomena can be caused naturally doesn't 'prove' that humans can't cause the same or similar phenomena, on a devastating scale."

Who has to prove something? If global warming and cooling have happened in the past, naturally, then they might very well happen again in the future for the very same reason. You're going to have us stop using incandescent light bulbs, enact huge carbon trading schemes vulnerable to abuse, look favourably or ignore the unjustice of China's one-child policy, etc. just because carbon dioxide in the wrong placemight be causing global warming that we might be able to do something about? You're crazy!

So your example is that "humans died before the atomic bomb was developed". How ironic! I've just read this headline from the Huffington Post: "Sun Scientists Debate Whether Solar Lull Could Trigger Another 'Little Ice Age'" No doubt you will want to control nuclear activity on the sun! Why not let the two effects cancel each other out? Yes, I realize that one might be greater or more long-lived than the other, but how much do you really know about climate change? You're the one who needs to get real.

Anyone who refers to 'scientism' and 'Matt Ridley' in a comment on a science blog is am evangelist for nonsense, sorry. Thus I see many parallels with Seventh Day Adventism. Why don't you go peddle your lies with people that you at least have a chance to convert, no?

Eli wrote, "The long sad history of millennial sects is that millennial sects are very bad news the day and years after for those who wake up and find their expectations were foolish and nothing has happened and for those of us who had to put up with their damaging expectations beforehand and give them assistance to pick up their lives afterwards."

Agreed. The Christ has said, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only." If He Himself did not know or claim to know, how dare we. His repeated emphasis is to be ready.

My sentence, "Think of the Grim Reaper", was an example, Thomas. I don't know when I'm going to physically die, but I'm going to physically die. Unless Christ comes back first. Actually, because of Christ, I can live again. He is the way, the truth, and the life.

1) Mann's hockey-stick does not depend on his specific PCA implementation, or even the standard full-centered PCA implementation. The same hockey stick is produced when a straightforward averaging/regression is performed without use of the PCA method. Mann used PCA simply as a data-reduction/averaging procedure. Alternate, non PCA methods work equally well, as anyone who has done his/her homework about the topic has been aware of for *years*.

2) When PCA is used, the hockey-stick is constructed from a *combination of multiple* PC's. The obsession over a single PC indicates a lack of understanding of how the technique works.

3) Full-centered and Mann's "short-centered" PCA implementations work equally well as long as a consistent procedure is used to determine which PC's to retain. Mann's PC selection procedure produced the same hockey-stick for full-centered and short-centered PCA implementations.

4) In my previous post to canman, I posed a very simple question about the most fundamental aspects of the PCA/SVD algorithm. Canman's reply, as expected, demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the basics of the PCA/SVD procedure.

Lurkers here should take note -- most AGW "skeptics" are utterly and completely ignorant of even the most rudimentary basics of the science they are attacking, and canman is a canonical example of this.

Since it is an article of faith at National Review that climate science is as much a religion as football at Notre Dame, be thankful Steyn has not sold the comparison of Jerry Sandusky to a certain middle eastern theologian as the next neocon casus belli

To the guy whose lips move when he tries to rationalise his existence...

Tell me a bit about heaven.

For instance, do people still have bodieswhen they arrive? Eyes? Genitals? Alimentary canals?

If so, why?

Eyes are for seeing danger and finding food and mates.

Genitals are for reproducing to carry the genetic legacy after the current generation drops off the log - it death still a valid life goal in heaven?

Digestive systems are for obtaining energy and repairing and replacing bits of body. Is there still wear and tear on the body whilst gambolling about in heaven?

And about energy... is there entropy in heaven? If not, how does work occur? Are the laws of thermodynamics different in heaven? If there is entropy, is not heaven then a functionally temporary entity?

Do animals and plants go to heaven? What about the great apes, which have been demonstrated to have self awareness, pharmacological knowledge, altruism and moral compasses, and which some such researchers as Carel van Schaik recognise as "beings"? If not, why not, and what is there in heaven in terms of heavenly ecosystems?

If they do, isn't Earthly pollution and general biospheric destruction a sin against future heavenly beings? And if they don't go to heaven why then is this current iteration of "Creation" so disposable?

Where is heaven? How do you know that the superstitious nomads and the institutional clergy who have nurtured these stories for millennia are not psychotic, schizophrenic, political, medacious, misunderstood, and/or otherwise unreliable as witnesses?

Why have you not addressed the many hundreds of Biblical incosistencies and other fallacies to which I referred above?

How does your blind faith differ from that of countless others who have died believing their respective cult leaders?

Bernard wrote, "Why have you not addressed the many hundreds of Biblical incosistencies and other fallacies to which I referred above?"

I have not because:

(1) that would take a long time.(2) They're only inconsistencies and fallacies when interpreted by the presuppositions of your faith.(3) Your mocking tone is evidence that you're not really interested in answers.

I speak so I am says:"Christianity is a reasonable faith; I'm not so sure about your creed."

I speak so I am, of course statements like this are met with a mocking tone- how can they not be? There's no logical case to be made for Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. Adherents BELIEVE in their gods. Logic, reason, proof play no part in it.

The age of the earth, the shape of the earth, the story of Noah's ark, etc., etc. are all directly contradicted by science. Reason tells us one story - faith tells us another. There is nothing reasonable about the Christian traditions on these (and many other) subjects.

It is instructive that the man who wrote the The Age of Reason stated: HE THAT BELIEVES IN THE STORY OF CHRIST IS AN INFIDEL TO GOD. All caps in the original.

The biggest tell in the Cornwall Declaration is the lack of any mention of preserving biodiversity.

The two mainstays of evangelical creation care are climate change and preserving endangered species - both measure humanity as stewards of God's creation and failing at either shows great sinfulness.

Cornwall signers make up nonsense about climate science, but if they weren't ideological, they could still embrace biodiversity protection. The fact that they wouldn't do so shows they're driven by ideology, not theology, and definitely not by any concrete expression of creation care.

Brian, since you can't be referring to the Cornwall Alliance's "Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming"--which, of course, does not refer to biodiversity protection--you must be referring to the "Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship." Its first declared aspiration is this:

"We aspire to a world in which human beings care wisely and humbly for all creatures, first and foremost for their fellow human beings, recognizing their proper place in the created order."

"We aspire to a world in which human beings care wisely and humbly for all creatures..."

One of the worst side effects of all that extra CO2 mankind is dumping into the atmosphere is that the oceans absorb a lot of it, making them more acidic. At a certain level of acidity which could quite possibly be attained this century, many species of shellfish won't be able to form their little shells.

Does 'I speak...' imagine that's going to bode well for these creatures, or for a food chain that a significant part of humanity depends on? So much for human beings "caring wisely and humbly for all creatures", huh? And that's only one example of the kind of havoc we're going to wreak on plants and animals with our continuing pollution of the atmosphere. We've already driven many species to extinction just by increasing the average global temps as much as we have from pre-industrial.

The trouble with fundies is that their ideology blinds them to the ultimate consequences of their actions - by design!

Anyone who has done his/her homework fully realizes that Mann's hockey-stick results are completely independent of his or any other PCA implementation. Short-centered PCA, full-centered PCA, or averaging without PCA produce the same hockey-stick from the data. Mann and others demonstrated that clearly *years* ago.

As for the full-centered vs. short-centered thing, of course it's better to use full-centered. Mann chose short-centering because of the varying data record lengths made full-centering more complicated. But if you apply consistent PC selection rules, it really doesn't matter which centering convention you use for data-reduction (which is what Mann used PCA for).

When you use PCA/SVD for data-reduction, you don't need to assign a particular "interpretation" to each individual PC you retain, because your answer is constructed from a *combination* of those PC's. Again, this should be quite clear to anyone who understands PCA and understands what I mean by "data reduction".

Mann's PCA-based results were computed from a *combination* of PC's, not just the leading PC. The fixation on a single PC is an indication of the lack of understanding of what the PCA/SVD algorithm does.

The question I asked canman about how to distinguish strong signal data from noise data by looking at PCA/SVD outputs was a very basic question about the fundamentals of the technique. It's something that students who have been introduced to the technique should be able to answer without batting an eyelash.

The fact that canman could not answer that question should make it very clear to lurkers that he is in way over his head here -- all he can do is parrot talking-points without the slightest understanding of the subject material.

Canman (and everyone else) would be much better off if he did a lot more listening and a *lot* less (as in no) talking.

"aspire to a world in which human beings care wisely and humbly for all creatures, first and foremost for their fellow human beings, recognizing their proper place in the created order."

they anathematize anthropogenic ocean acidification as a mysterium iniquitatis since there is no way sinful man can aspire to drive the pH low enough to dissove Lucifer if he misses the lake of sulfur next time he drops in.

What are you trying to say, Metzomagic? That the Cornwall signers do not care about shellfish? As their first aspiration indicates, they do care, but the price of economic devastation and loss of individual liberty is far too high. Get a sense of proportion, please! And show some concern for your fellow man.

Actually, according to your faith, the survival of the fittest and continuing evolution should mean that another higher kind of species will eventually evolve, anyway. Put a little human intelligence into the shellfish's development, and their adaptation should be even more rapid. The original shellfish were destined to disappear sooner or later.

And I should add, Metzomagic, that whatever applies to CAGW applies even more to the shellfish--that any remedy we attempt, guaranteed to be costly, will have an appreciable effect on the acidity of the ocean, which you say is increasing because of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which you say is mainly an artificial phenomenon caused by man.

You could just as well try to make the ocean less salty! No doubt its increasing salt concentration also has negative effects for some of its inhabitants.

I speak says: "What are you trying to say, Metzomagic? That the Cornwall signers do not care about shellfish?"

I speak's God says: "But anything in the seas or the rivers that has not fins and scales, of the swarming creatures in the waters and of the living creatures that are in the waters, is detestable to you."

I think as a counter-balance to 'reasonable faith' I'm going to begin practicing revelatory science. So, how do I know that CAGW is true - because God told me so.

The prohibition against eating certain sea foods was part of the Old Testament dietary code. It became obsolete with the expansion of God's people to include people of every nationality and ethnic background. Read Acts 10 and 11.

You sound like a Pentecostal with your announcement that you believe CAGW is true because God told you so. But at least the Pentecostal really believes God told him so. I'm a Christian who believes that the Bible is the rule of faith and practice. Christianity is a reasonable faith.

Kevin, seeing as you did refer to "reasonable faith," I can see that you probably had read my last response. But how does giving what you call a "counter-balance to 'reasonable faith'" contribute anything to the conversation?

Do you deny that your faith in CAGW is complex? But if it isn't, then perhaps you have a simplistic understanding.

As they say, this is not even wrong. I don't have 'faith' in CAGW; just as I don't have faith in *any* scientific theory. I accept them as the best description we have as to how the world works, but accept - indeed expect - that they will be revised and made better.

Furthermore, I am literate enough to read and understand the basis for most scientific theories. I can read the published literature and work through most of the maths myself.

You lack a snark detector. Reasonable faith is an analogue to revelatory science. They are both oxymorons.

And why is it alleged Christians always quote Peter, but rarely Jesus? Who was it that said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Apparently he was over-ruled by Peter and the Holy Spirit.

You do have faith in CAGW. You have so much faith that in its name you justify economic devastation, excessive taxation, and loss of much individual freedom. You believe that so much as you will now hurt the poor people in developing nations you will benefit them when CAGW fails to happen (because, you will say, the correct measures were taken).

Sure, there is some science behind CAGW--and it's very complex--but there is a whole lot of faith, too. And because of my very different faith, I reasonably conclude that CAGW isn't a danger.

I know, as well as you do that you haven't done all the science yourself. You haven't empirically obtained the knowledge you have. So in large part there has been "revelatory science." But you lack the humility that Sir Isaac Newton had, when he said that he stood on the shoulders of those who went before. Newton, Pascal, Faraday, and others were also theologians or theology students. Theology fascinated them.

You are a scientist in the sense that you adhere to scientism, an unwarranted trust in natural science to solve the problems of our world. But all the problems in our world are the result of one problem, sin, failing to live with God as He had intended us to.

Science as we know it came out of a Christian world view. The world was knowable and predictable because God is orderly. He told us to rule over it; we don't have to be afraid of supposed spirits of the trees, lakes, etc. Because truth exists, it was passed on in universities. Because brotherly love is an imperative, hospitals were founded. Science happened because the West had a Christian world view.

But then the West became proud. As Nietsche wrote, God is dead. We decided we did not need Him. Now the West is in decline.

Oh dear oh dear. I wonder what flavour of fundamentalist I speak therefore I am is? Reminds me of one of my lecturers, a 7th day adventist who was anti-evolution.

Lets see, we have the decline of the west, which has been declining since Spengler at least yet is still here; we've got comparison of science to theology, which simply has not been an intellectually honest comparison since the 17th century at least; we've got the nonsense denialist term 'cagw'; and the conflation of science with christianity; we've got the "Your science is just faith too!" playground taunt which disgraces anyone who claims to have a working cortex - I've seen it many times from creationist idiots before.

The fact is that christianity, or rather certain varieties of it, were helpful for the formation of science, not instrumental in it. Fortunately for the west, the Aristotelians won in the 13th century, and proto-scientists got to speculate a fair bit, as long as they admitted at the end that the Bible was right and their speculations wrong. Besides, for various reasons the Bible just was't as prescriptive about the universe and how it worked, leaving lots of room for thought and experiment.

Of course various flavours of Christianity ended up with different approaches; by the 19th century the Papal states in Italy were renowned for their backwardness, hardly an indication of the inherent christian-ness of science. Meanwhile the Protestant northern states had forged ahead and created the industrial evolution and much of modern science, but without the involvement of christianity as such.

There was a book out not so long ago that claimed the same as you, what was the authors name? Hmm, I can't remember.

I'm not interested in merely trading insults, Guthrie. Spengler wasn't so long ago, and the West is in decline. That theology is no longer considered the queen of the sciences only backs up my point. I have not conflated science and faith; it's your party that has been doing so.

Your science is not faith; your CAGW requires faith. Evolutionism pretty much is a faith. You are dishonest if you assert otherwise.

The term CAGW is not nonsense; it is, in fact, what people on this site mean when they speak of the threat of "global warming" and doing something about it. That many people on this site are convinced that we can and need to do something about it is a testament to their great faith.

As Mark Steyn wrote at the end of 2009, "the 'science' of global warming is so settled it’s now perfectly routine for leaders of the developed world to go around sounding like apocalyptic madmen of the kind that used to wander the streets wearing sandwich boards and handing out homemade pamphlets. Governments that are incapable of—to pluck at random—enforcing their southern border, reducing waiting times for routine operations to below two years, or doing something about the nightly ritual of car-torching 'youths,' are nevertheless taken seriously when they claim to be able to change the very heavens—if only they can tax and regulate us enough."

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett, a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny who finally handed in the keys and retired from his wanna be research university. The students continue to be naive but great people and the administrators continue to vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional without Eli's help. Eli notices from recent political developments that this behavior is not limited to administrators. His colleagues retain their curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they, or at least some of them occasionally heeded his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.